Loading, please wait...
Details
LOT 2402
African Wooden Ancestor Figure
YORUBA TRIBE, 20TH CENTURY A.D.
17 1/2 in. (600 grams, 44.5 cm).
A hand-carved standing female figure with hands placed by the side and scarification to the face, breasts and stomach. [No Reserve]
Provenance
From Southwest Nigeria, West Africa.
From an old Bristol, UK, ethnographical collection.
From the property of a late Lincolnshire, UK, gentleman.
Footnotes
Human figures are represented in a fundamentally naturalistic way, except for bulging eyes; flat, protruding, and usually parallel lips; and stylised ears. Within the basic canon of Yoruba sculpture, many local styles can be distinguished, down to the hand of the individual artist.
CONDITIONVETTING:
TimeLine Auctions follows a vetting process to ensure the authenticity and legality of all items, reinforcing our commitment to integrity and responsible trading. Each antiquity, antique, and coin lot undergoes thorough examination by a vetting committee of at least ten external specialists, professional trade association members, scientists, and archaeologists: Our Vetting Process
AUCTIONS:
TimeLine is a leading auction house specialising in antiquities, ancient art, collectables, natural history, coins, medals, and books. Our auctions offer museums, collectors, historians, and enthusiasts the opportunity to acquire unique and historically significant pieces.
RELATED LOTS
-
African Wooden Ceremonial Face Mask
Chokwe Tribe, 20th century A.D.Sold for (Inc. bp): £52
Carved and decorated with lengths of fiber representing hair, small nose, carved teeth and scarification marks. 525 grams, 28.5 cm
From Western Ivory Coast and into Liberia, West Africa. From the private collection of the late Brian Morley; acquired in the 1950s. From the property of a late Lincolnshire, UK, gentleman. -
African Wooden Mother with Child Fertility Figure
Fang Tribe, early-mid 20th century A.D.Sold for (Inc. bp): £65
A hand-carved female figure standing on a base holding a child in front of the figure and displaying scarification to the face and breasts. 1.38 kg, 68.5 cm
From Equatorial Guinea, West Coast of Central Africa. From an old Bristol, UK, ethnographical collection. From the property of a late Lincolnshire, UK, gentleman.
The people that are called “Fang” in the geographic or ethnographic literature number 800,000 and constitute a vast mosaic of village communities, established in a large zone of Atlantic equatorial Africa comprising Cameroon, continental Equatorial Guinea and nearly the whole north of Gabon, on the right bank of the Ogowe River. The Fang practice a cult devoted to ancestor lineages, the Bieri, whose aim is to both protect themselves from the deceased and to recruit their aid in matters of daily life. Bieri are reliquary figures placed by the Fang upon their bark boxes to personify the tribal soul, containing the skulls and skeletons of prominent deceased persons. The Bieri also served for therapeutic rituals and, above all, for initiations of young males during the great so festival. The rites included consumption of a plant with stimulant properties, which induced a trance lasting for several hours, and the “resuscitation of the ancestors,” in which figures detached from the reliquaries were moved somewhat playfully from behind a raffia screen as puppets. -
African Wooden Ceremonial Face Mask
Senufo Tribe, early-mid 20th century A.D.Sold for (Inc. bp): £20
Carved with a narrow face, narrow protruding sharp nose, slit eyes with some decoration, a closed mouth with protruding lips, bead and cowrie shell decoration to one ear and a bird's neck and head sculpture to the top of the mask. 1.12 kg, 36.5 cm
From Burkina Faso, West Africa. From a Glasgow ethnographical collection; formed 1940s-1950s. From the property of a late Lincolnshire, UK, gentleman.
